


tell me your nightmares

by gloriousmonsters



Series: Earth 451 [2]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: M/M, Prompt Fic, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 08:59:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12208005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloriousmonsters/pseuds/gloriousmonsters
Summary: One of his greatest frustrations is that he’s never had the Bat in his hands for a full session.





	tell me your nightmares

One of his greatest frustrations is that he’s never had the Bat in his hands for a full session. FT was useful as a weapon, delightful even, but it reached its full potential when Jonathan could use it as a tool of therapy. Take someone into its influence, through it down to their deepest fears; bring them into the light and let them run their course. Done properly it was an atheist’s exorcism; painful and ugly but a thing of beauty, where he played God and drew out the demons. 

He has no doubt the Bat could use that. 

The scraps he’s gotten so far have been fascinating enough. The first time he managed to sneak some FT past Batman’s paranoid defenses (powder form, dusted onto Nightmare’s wings before she flew into Batman’s face) the Bat had fallen back a step, arms raising a little, mouth falling open. Jonathan had approached, backed him into a corner, watched with breathless satisfaction as the Bat sank to his knees. 

“Scary, isn’t it?” he asked gently. He liked how much smaller men like this looked when they were afraid. How the Bat looked far more human. “Tell me what’s scaring you.”

Batman hadn’t replied, for a long enough moment Jonathan wondered if he could. Then he reached out, and Jonathan had flinched back; but he was only clutching at Jonathan’s hand, like a kid on a dark street reaching for his mother’s hand. His eyes, momentarily visible behind the odd lenses of his mask, flickered unseeing around the room. He said, in a voice not quite his usual one, “It’s not safe…”

But police sirens had cut through the silence, then, and Jonathan had to break his grip and run.

* * *

 

The Bat was more careful after that. Nose filters, gas masks, sometimes wearing a mask that covered his whole face—Jonathan disliked that, for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate. Handling everything Jonathan might have touched as a hazardous material. But he couldn’t always be prepared. Once, he stepped into the room and looked surprised—he must have been after Jack, who Jonathan had been meeting with, and not heard that the Joker and Scarecrow had been sighted together. Jonathan had yanked his own mask into place so quickly it left a scrape on his jaw that ached for days, but it was worth it; he caught the Bat in a thick cloud of FT. 

It had been a stronger solution. Batman was on his knees when the faint fog dissipated, frozen for a moment; then he scurried into the corner like a frightened animal. “Tendency to put your back to walls,” Jonathan observed out loud, following him. “Expected, in a victim of trauma such as I assume you to be.”

Jack had been in the background laughing quietly to himself (FT took him in an odd way, causing rapid mood swings and occasional bouts of impulsive behaviour; doing little more than speeding him up, essentially). Jonathan ignored him, adjusting his mask as he stood over Batman. “Scared?” he asked him. Obvious, leading questions were your best bet with FT victims. A little fear could keep you sharp, but a lot made you stupid. Jonathan knew that from experience. “Are you scared?”

Part of him just wanted to hear the Bat admit it, just once. Confess a night horror, maybe cry a little. Just seeing him crouched with his back to the wall, gloved hands shaking, was a small satisfaction, but Jonathan needed more. The Bat had seen him  _ screaming;  _ it was only fair. He leaned in closer, fishing for the needle of FT he had stowed in his bag somewhere; the injectable form worked quicker and with more intensity. 

Batman reached out, hand landing awkwardly on Jonathan’s arm, and clutched again. “No—” 

Pleased at the response, Jonathan kept his hand in the bag. “What is it? What am I going to take out?”

“Gun,” Batman muttered. “Don’t.” Then he said something that might have been,  _ someone could get hurt,  _ but it was cut off by the smashing window. The Boy Wonder had ruined that session. 

* * *

The third time had been the briefest, and the most strange. The air vents in the Wayne Tower had been pumped full of FT, so much so Jonathan could only suppose Batman couldn’t avoid breathing a whiff in, despite the gas mask he was wearing when he appeared. He was brittle, tense in a way he usually wasn’t, and when he slammed Jonathan against the wall Jonathan read the shiver in his hands and the wideness of his barely visible eyes and choked out a laugh.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked, not expecting an answer; the Bat hadn’t breathed in nearly enough to make him suggestible. 

“Stop this,” Batman had said, and that was nothing new; but the follow-up was. “Someone—someone is going to get hurt. Jonathan,  _ you  _ could get hurt.”

He’d preached that line of thinking before, all that  _ I’m just trying to save you from yourselves  _ idiocy, but the shudder in his voice was new. Made it seem genuine. The  _ Jonathan  _ was odd too, so much more intimate than the usual  _ Crane,  _ occasionally graced by  _ Professor.  _

But Jonathan lost his own mask shortly after that, and anything else that might have happened was lost in the sweet, painful haze of FT. 

* * *

Tonight, neither of them are under the influence. The Bat’s mask held secure, and he shut down the tanks of FT Jonathan was planning to feed into the water supply at the source, ensuring that Jonathan wouldn’t get a secondary lungful (If Jonathan had possessed his backup doses, he might have availed himself of one; as painful as returning to Arkham in the middle of a panic attack was, the advantage of avoiding a long, awkward car ride with Batman beforehand made a little ‘accident’ seem appealing. Alas, he had used it up earlier that day).

“It would have helped, in the long run,” Jonathan says, just to break the silence.

“It would have destroyed the city.”

“Destroyed some of it. What was left would be stronger than before. And the benefit to science—”

“Would mean nothing, compared to the number of lives lost.”

Jonathan scoffs faintly, turning his gaze out the window. “You can never see the bigger picture.”

“I don’t think I want to see things the way you do, Professor Crane.”

“Why?” Jonathan glances over at him, the shadow behind the wheel; somehow managing to be a thing of fear and darkness even in a confined space, with his clawed hands on the wheel of a car. It’s an enviable ability. “What are you afraid of?”

The Bat is quiet, for a long moment. Then he says, “Those under my protection suffering.”

The words are oddly heavy, enough so that Jonathan feels the need to dismiss them. “Those under your protection? Am I included on that doubtless exclusive list?”

The Bat looks at him, light from the streets shining off the lenses of his mask. Jonathan doesn’t know whether he wants to shrink back or lean forward in his seat, afraid but hungry for the sheer intensity the Bat radiates in this moment.

“Yes,” he says. Flat and simple. He looks away, leaving Jonathan shaking slightly.

Few things feel sacred to him, but that confession does, and he doesn’t know what to make of it; how to proceed. All he can think, at last, is that when he next has Batman in his power he might try saying some things differently.


End file.
